style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Then why did I write?’ she found herself asking, unable to prevent the question from spilling from her tongue, and once again it was Aristotle Myconos who tried to cool the situation.
‘Dionysus, let us not jump to conclusions,’ he said, and there was a warning in his eyes that Martha failed to comprehend. ‘Let Martha tell us her reasons. Then we can discuss this matter.’
‘I’ve told you my reason,’ she exclaimed, coming to her feet again. ‘What other reason could there be?’
Dion’s narrow lips curled. ‘You did not consider perhaps that, now the child is older, it might be possible for you to sue for maintenance?’
‘Maintenance?’ Martha was horrified. ‘No! No, of course not.’
‘Dion …’ Again that warning note in his father’s voice, but this time he ignored it.
‘I should tell you,’ he said coldly, ‘I have been to England. I have seen the circumstances in which you live. And it is no surprise to me that you have finally decided that independence is not everything you thought it to be.’
His words temporarily numbed Martha. Dion had been to England! He had seen the circumstances in which she lived! What did that mean? Had he seen Josy? Did he know about Sarah? His next words enlightened her.
‘You have not sued for divorce. This man, whoever he is, has not made any apparent effort to marry you, to father the child he seeded in you. You must be getting desperate to give the child a name!’
‘You are wrong,’ she declared now. ‘Totally and utterly wrong! I—I—if you think Roger is—is Josy’s father, then you’re crazy!’
Dion took a step towards her at this piece of insolence, but as if mindful of his father’s watching presence, he halted. ‘Then who is he? Tell me that?’ he demanded. ‘And tell me why you dared to write to my father asking for a permission you knew would be denied you!’
Martha’s breathing was shallow and uneven, but she managed to say what she had to. ‘After—after I left you, I stayed with Sarah for a while, but her apartment was tiny, just a bed-sitter, and her landlady didn’t take too kindly to having a baby’s nappies hanging in the bathroom. Then—then——’ She broke off, still unwilling to give him the satisfaction of knowing about Sarah’s accident, and of how useless the apartment had become to someone confined to a wheelchair, and went on less convincingly: ‘We needed somewhere else, somewhere I—I could wheel a pram. Roger offered us the ground floor of his house.’
Dion regarded her through lowered lids. ‘Why should he do that?’
‘Would you believe—kindness?’
Dion’s lips thinned. ‘You ask too much.’
‘Obviously.’ Martha held up her head. ‘Well, if that’s all there is to say …’
‘It is not.’ Dion cast brooding eyes in his father’s direction. ‘There are still things we have to say to one another.’
His father rose abruptly to his feet. Pushing back his chair, he came round the desk, but when Martha began to accompany him to the door, he waved her back again, saying:
‘You will eat lunch with us before you leave, Martha. You must be hungry. I will go and speak with Maria myself.’
‘Oh, no—please—I mean——’ Martha glanced awkwardly at her husband. ‘I think it would be better if I left right away.’
‘You forget, there is still the matter of the divorce to discuss,’ put in Dion bleakly, and his father bowed his head politely and left the room, alone.
With his departure, Martha felt an increasing weight of tension. Dion in his father’s company was barely tolerable, Dion alone was terrifying. It wasn’t that he frightened her exactly, although his anger did send frissons of apprehension along her spine, but she was afraid of the power he had over her, the dark power that both attracted and repelled, and which had driven her to the very edge of sanity during those first weeks after she had left him.
Dion, for his part, seemed curiously loath to break the silence that had fallen between them, and while Martha sipped nervously at her lemonade, her eyes darting anxiously about the room, he walked heavily over to the windows and stared indifferently out to sea. She thought he was composing how next he might humiliate her, and she was shocked when he asked suddenly:
‘Why did you do it, Martha? Why did you leave me? Did I ask you to go? Did I threaten you with divorce? If this man meant so much to you, why did you not tell me before the child was born?’
Martha put her glass down carefully on the corner of the desk, and then, arming herself with what little composure she had left, she said: ‘You know why I left you, Dion. You couldn’t possibly expect me to stay with you after the things you said. I may not have the Myconos money, but I do have some pride, and no one——’ her voice cracked ignominiously, ‘—no one, least of all my husband, is going to call me a tramp and get away with it!’
‘Poli kola, what would you call it?’ he demanded, turning then to face her, his eyes narrowed and provoked. ‘How was I supposed to react? Should I have said—of course, I understand about these things! It is natural that my wife—my liberated English wife—should need the admiration of more than one man! No!’
Martha drew an uneven breath. ‘It’s hopeless. You’re unreasonable! You just won’t listen——’
‘Oh, parndon!’ His features were hard and angry. ‘But what am I supposed to listen to? More lies? More evasions? You dare to come here pleading for this man, knowing you are causing nothing but pain and embarrassment to me and my family, and you think I am unreasonable!’
Martha sighed. ‘Roger Scott is a family friend,’ she said wearily. ‘Just a family friend.’
Dion left the window to join her by the desk, regarding her coldly as she stood her ground. ‘And is he the father of your child?’ he asked bleakly. ‘This family friend?’
‘No!’
Martha’s denial was automatic, but she realised as she spoke that it might have been simpler not to answer him. She was getting into deep water, and until she had had time to think about the divorce, time to consider what she was going to do about Josy, she should not make such unequivocal statements.
‘Then who?’ Dion was relentless. ‘Someone in London, that I know. Someone your sister introduced you to, perhaps? She never wanted you to marry me, did she? That was never in her scheme of things. She would enjoy hurting me through you, wouldn’t she?’
Martha gasped. ‘That’s a rotten thing to say! And it’s not true. Sarah’s not like that. She cares about me, that’s all. She knew that money was your god, and she was afraid I might be stifled by it. She wanted me to be happy, but she was not to blame for our incompatibility.’
Dion’s face darkened ominously. ‘We were not incompatible!’ he declared angrily. ‘At least, not before she interfered.’
Martha trembled with indignation. ‘You could always find excuses for your own inadequacy, couldn’t you, Dion?’ she taunted, and then gulped convulsively
